Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday December 20, 2010 @02:59PM
from the put-the-swiss-in-charge dept.

jomama717 writes "In a post titled 'The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time' this morning on The Huffington Post, Senator Al Franken lays down a powerful case for net neutrality, as well as a grim scenario if the current draft regulations being considered by the FCC are accepted. Quoting: 'The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing. That's why Tuesday is such an important day. The FCC will be meeting to discuss those regulations, and we must make sure that its members understand that allowing corporations to control the Internet is simply unacceptable. Although Chairman Genachowski's draft Order has not been made public, early reports make clear that it falls far short of protecting net neutrality.'"

He is the only politician I don't hate. I don't hate too many things but lawyers and politicians [normally one and the same] are my 2.
I think because Franken was not a lawyer before becoming a politician is why he seems to actually care about what is going on. The rest? Just there for a way too big paycheck [and not always from uncle sam]. I nice quote of his from a while back Sen. Al Franken: "I May Not Be A Lawyer, But Neither Are The Majority Of Americans" Gotta love this man.

Why would you do that to him? And why would you do that to public discourse?

Not that it isn't an interesting idea -- he's certainly smart enough and would bring a whole different spin to any discussion -- but he serves a more important role using comedy to question the decisions and even the discussions being promoted by those in charge. There is nothing that can ground an issue and restore perspective like shining a light on absurdity.

Net neutrality is an issue because Internet access has become a near-monopoly service. Few people today buy residential Internet connectivity from someone other than their monopoly telco or monopoly cable provider. For both of those monopolies, Internet access is a tie-in sale - both want to sell customers a "bundle" with telephony, video, and Internet connectivity. In some areas, there's only one provider.

We've already lost one deregulation battle - the right to use any ISP you want over the monopoly telco wires. [broadbandreports.com] The FCC changed the rules on that back in 2003. Until then, telcos had to provide raw DSL connections from an ISP to a customer at prices no higher than they charged their own internal ISP. Once the FCC dropped that, the ISP business became a monopoly.

Further back, telcos used to be regulated common carriers. We lost that back in the 1990s.

"Net neutrality" is the last stop before total monopoly control.

Wireless doesn't help. "Deregulation" also allowed wire-line and wireless carriers to merge, which is why AT&T is back in the cellular business. Nor does cable/telco competition. Mergers in that area are coming. In the end, you'll have one connection to the outside world, with a boot ready to step on your tube if you get out of line.

The only provider in my area is Comcast. If I don't like Comcast, I am free to not buy their service. But I like having internet in my home, so I deal with Comcast. At the moment it seems that I have no inherent right to the service. And this situation will not change unless/until the US comes to the conclusion that internet access is a right (which is I think where we are heading, but we're not there yet).

What is more free and neutral than having the choice whether or not to

Conservatives are superficially lumping network neutrality in with the rest of the anti-Obama/government/socialism rhetoric, but the issue is far too complex to capture in partisan soundbites.
This Bill Moyers broadcast from a few years ago (well before Obama arrived on the scene) explains the network neutrality issue extremely well, representing multiple viewpoints, including business, politics, consumers etc.
The broadcast is about an hour long, but I have yet to come across a better way to get the complete picture of what network neutrality is all about (each of these videos gives a useful illustration of a key tradeoff):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmlpfXzSfhg>Part 1
Part 2 [youtube.com]
Part 3 [youtube.com]
Part 4 [youtube.com]
Part 4 [youtube.com]
Part 6 [youtube.com]
Part 7 [youtube.com]
Part 8 [youtube.com]
Part 9 [youtube.com]

Actually, for the most part, conservatives don't trust the government not to impose control over Internet content under the guise of "net neutrality". In the beginning the regulations will be very subtle, but they will establish the precedent for government regulation of the Internet. Then bit by bit the government will extend its regulation so that it will be harder and harder to get information from anyone other than the approved mega-corporations.

I fail to see how you can prevent Comcast from slowing down the "other ISP" without a rule against that.

Basically you are saying you *do* want Net Neutrality, but the exact regulation is that the the data is split up into things you call an "ISP" and only those larger blocks must be treated "fairly", and that customers are allowed to buy any subset of these blocks.

I have mixed emotions about Network Neutrality. The concept has some good points, but there are large down sides as well. The worst thing is AFAIK no one has ever found a case that would be affected by most of the proposals I've seen posted. The closest I have seen was a telco blocking Vonage's SIP registration ports several years back, which the FCC caught. Neither AT&T nor Verizon are major rural players and mobile is most certainly not the way people in rural areas get their broadband. Perhaps the Senator should go a little further off the highway to see how people are connecting. FIXED wireless (Alvarion, Tranzeo, Canopy, etc), DSL, DOCSIS cable, and a surprising amount of FTTx but damn little mobile broadband.

As someone who lives in a rural area, allow me to explain how I and everyone around me views the situation.

You are correct. Living in a rural area comes with trade-offs. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who lives out here understands that.

For water, we must pay for a well and a pump. For heat, we must pay for propane tanks to be regularly refilled. For trash, we must drive our own refuse to a dumpster facility, as there is no pickup. After a snow, our roads get plowed last if at all, so we use our own vehicles and equipment to do it sooner. For television, we pay for satellite or make do with rabbit ears.

For Internet, we're willing to pay for the wires to be extended to our area.

Oh, wait, we can't. We don't even have the option of paying for the last mile (well, last several miles).

I guess what I'm saying is, your welfare-queen image of rural residents is wrong. We accept that we have to pay more for a lot of things. We don't want subsidies or charity. I and most people around me would be happy to pay the extra cost.

Currently, I pay for a wireless broadband service. I get about 3 Mbps each way. It's decent but I'm sure I would do more (more work, more video chat, more Google Earth browsing, etc.) if we had Fios. But it's clear we never will. (Before the wireless service was available, I had satellite Internet, which is so bad I wouldn't wish it on anyone.)

Break up companies such that there are "pipe providers" and "content providers". If my net service provider is not also my cable TV company then it loses much of its motivation to oppose net neutrality. Of course, this may not go far enough. If I'm an ISP and my backbone connection doesn't provide sufficient bandwidth to Comcast's digital cable stream, Comcast will be unhappy (and so will my users). So I'll need to add that bandwidth. The question is how much of that effort should be paid for by me, the "pipe guy" and Comcast (or any other content provider). I'm tempted to say that the market would dictate "pipe provider" behavior without any direct intervention from content providers. For instance, if Comcast offers digital cable and says "our service works on X, Y and Z providers, but not U, V and W", then U/V/W are going to face pressure to properly support Comcast's content stream.

Let me summarize:* They only see this as a checkbox on the Obama administration's to-do list. ("Work on net neutrality." DONE.)* They don't see any problem with the status quo other than some "isolated incidents"* They feel they are overstepping their regulatory bounds and this should be an action undertaken by the courts or Congress.

The internet is an exceptionally important part of the United States' infrastructure. The idea of it not being neutral and in the hands of private corporations is just ridiculous.

If the internet's fate should be in the hands of businesses then why not the same for landlines, roads or even the military? Seriously if the government fucks everything up then surely something as important as the military as well as roads should be in the hands of private companies and quit wasting tax payer money on them.

One way or the other, the free (as in speech) internet will die. You may now select to have the internet controlled by powerful corporations, or by the government (which is controlled by powerful corporations). Aren't you glad you live in a democracy where you can choose?

The problem isn't that ISPs want to filter content, it's that they want to filter content and still have common carrier safe harbor provisions that relieve them of all liability for the content they are controlling.

You can't have it both ways (well, logically, at least... of course ISPs may get it both ways, but they shouldn't). If you don't want to be responsible for content, you can't filter on content.

If this were made legally clear, I doubt many ISPs would touch content filtering with a 10' pole. They *want* freedom from liability.

...you don't see intelligence in Jerry Lewis movies. Nor do you see it in Marx Brothers, Laural and Hardy, or other slapstick movies. I won't watch a lot of the comedy I come across today because I find it stupid, actually I don't watch comedy much.

No argument on Jerry Lewis, but you need to re-watch Marx Brothers movies and Laurel and Hardy if you thought they were just stupid slapstick. Both were satire acts using comedy for cover.

you don't see intelligence in Jerry Lewis [wikipedia.org] movies.Nor do you see it in Marx Brothers [wikipedia.org]

Somebody mark this down. I think we may have the most idiotic statement made on Slashdot in calendar year 2010.

I don't know how much you know about Jerry Lewis' films, but when it comes to mise-en-scène, his films make Woody Allen's movies look like radio. The Ladies Man is studied in graduate level film courses along side the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as examples of director as auteur, where one man controls everything about a films artistic vision. Being a right-wing "libertarian" douche, you probably think he's highly regarded by the French just to piss you off.

As far as the Marx Bros, those scripts by George S Kaufmann were much more about verbal gymnastics than "slapstick". In fact, except for the brilliant pantomime of Harpo Marx, there's very little slapstick in the more important Marx Brothers films.

actually I don't watch comedy much

You Ayn Rand types aren't really known for your sense of humor, but to be fair, you provide plenty of comedy for the rest of us.

but on this issue, it appears that this *Comedian* certainly has a better grasp on this issue than the *Experts* at the FCC.

Nope, his grasp is just as bad as the FCC's. He says the FCC already has the "power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality" but he does not name those powers. As a matter of fact court rulings have said the FCC does not have those powers. In order to get around those court rulings the FCC is unilaterally making changes to it's regulations.

It's given that authority under Title I and Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In an interesting twist, when the FCC originally reclassified broadband from a regulated Title II service to a to non-regulated Title I a number of competitive broad band providers sued the FCC stating they did not have the authority to classify broadband as an unregulated Title I service.

The case (FCC v. Brand X in 2005) the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the FCC had the technical expertise to determine the classi

Where is your evidence? Your statement sounds like opinion. When has Franken disregarded the constitution? And for that matter, where in the Constitution does it prohibit socialism?

I'm not trying to be mean here, but you come across as angry and uninformed in your posts. If you provided even one example of Franken acting against the Constitution, you wouldn't sound so juvenile. As it is, it sounds like you are trying to preach to the choir, to convince only those who are already convinced, and what good is that?

There is no evidence. The "he hates the Constitution" and "he's a socialist" retorts are boilerplate right wing labels for liberal and moderate politicians and candidates, or knee jerk dog-whistle political responses to legislation they dislike. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard it uttered that Obama has "shredded the Constitution". These same people didn't say a word when Bush called the Constitution a piece of paper.
Ironically, most of these "Constitution protectors" hate the 14th Amendment. But you're labeled a patriot if you propose repealing it, not a Constitution hater.

On a race that tight, the opposition will naturally feel all of them should be checked.

There's nothing wrong with "counting all the votes". If they'd all been counted in 2000, there'd be more than 5000 more US soldiers alive today, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, not to mention the Twin Towers might still be standing and the people inside it alive.

I find myself wishing he'd stick to topics like this rather than his usual left-wing diatribes.

Sigh. I suppose the one thing we can expect a comedian-by-trade to understand is the need not just for government to respect free speech, but government to work to ensure that mega-giganto-corporations can't simply squish out everyone else's freedom of speech by drowning them out. Which at this point, thanks to a collection of bought-off Supreme Court boobs, may require constitutional amendment itself.:(

It does not necessarily follow that he actually has a developed sense of humor, merely that he happened upon enough catchphrases that the yokels would hyuk-hyuk to over and over again to make a career of it

Comedy is one of the hardest industries to break into in any meaningful way period. Call up ANY comedian and ask them (assuming they make enough money to pay for some kind of phone service.)

Now why don't you tell us what you do for a living so that I can write two sentences that dismiss your life's work with ignorant generalizations.

You have to consider that the people asked a question and let him respond without shouting or interrupting. On one hand this shows a dialogue with some actual interest in hearing what the other person has to say. On the other hand this is a key capability every politician needs: to be able to talk for a very lengthy amount of time and identify with anyone. What he did was good, he achieved some common ground with some very passionate opponents. But that's what politicians do. He's good but he's not accomplishing some impossible feat -- merely exhibiting good politeness and genuine interest in his constituents (opponents included). Franken had the attention of people that wanted to talk to him and what you saw were two parties genuinely interested in what the others had to say. Franken can lose his cool [youtube.com] and act just like other politicians [youtube.com].

I wish my Senator would come around to the county fair and talk to his constituents like that.

Okay, I must correct you here. That was at the state fair [dustytrice.com] which is a very huge thing in Minnesota and still a three to six hour drive from some of the more remote parts of Minnesota (like where I grew up). I don't think Al Franken makes it out to county fairs.

Now, I'm not disagreeing with you here and just to put some more positive spin on Franken, when I last went home my grandfather started rambling about all the times he had called up Franken and spoke with him on the phone. Thinking that my grandfather had finally lost it and was entering some sort of dementia, I asked my grandmother what he was talking about. She said he would wait on hold for thirty minutes and get about ten minutes of the senator's time every now and then (my grandfather is a retired dirt farmer living between Porter and Taunton). I was still skeptical but he showed me follow up letters from Franken's staff, hand signed by Franken explaining why Franken had voted on some bills that my grandfather had phoned him about. I was pretty impressed.

TFA makes some good points and breaks down "Net Neutrality" to the lay person who just wants to use the internet. You should try reading it.

On this point, I agree. I think Franken's on the right track here although I think he could have added another two sentence paragraph about limiting what specifically the FCC would be doing to address the obvious government control rebuttal a little more thoroughly. I am glad to see Franken writing this letter, though a little sad to see it in the Huffington Post and not a more mainstream publication.

Oh please. Every single time there is anything political you bring out that "metagovernment" crap, which not only has LESS of a chance than electing 50 non crap senators, in fact has about as much odds of winning as the entire USA military being taken on by 40 guys from Alabama where the biggest weapon they have is grandpaw's hunting rifle.

Here is what you would have to accomplish to pull off metagovenrment, please pay attention: You will have to simultaneously get the entire population to turn off ALL f

The words you are looking for is "main stream media" which is what gets dirt poor people in tar paper shacks to vote for less taxes for the rich and to cut off any assistance they may be getting. As I said I bet if you did a public poll right now when you asked about Wikileaks the answer you would get from the public is "terrorist hangout for rapists" without a single word about government bribes, payoffs, or any of the other nasty bits Wikileaks actually released.

Well I would agree with you if we weren't talking about these same people having a living shitfit over the death tax, you know? The one that affects millionaires? Or these same folks having a royal fit about benefits...which they currently enjoy. I mean can you even imagine living in a shack when it is 20 fricking degrees outside and railing for cuts in the very services that keep your family from starving? And these same people come out to scream over STATE benefits, even the ones they paid into? I mean se

As senator Al Franken not only ignored the majority of voters, who opposed health-care insurance reform, he ignored the Constitution of the USA too.

Citation needed. As for ignoring the majority of voters maybe but i for one support insurance reform and I voted for Fraken, so looks like he's doing what he was asked to do.

Not only that but Al Franken voted to censor the net.

This is where a committee voted to allow a bill to be voted on by the senators voted into office by the people... lets see how many votes we can take just to get a bill though. Not saying i agree with COICA, but allowing the bill to hit the floor is not the same as voting for it.

I'm taking the bait on this one, but how Net Neutrality will be saved or broken is a technological issue, not whether or not it should be. That is a first amendment issue, which is how Senator Franken presents it. This is about content, competition, economics, and rights - areas that hopefully all senators are well versed in, but in which Franken, as a writer and radio show host, has taken part in personally.

What are you talking about? Everyone (except California) LOVED Enron. Enron fell apart because they were corrupt and eventually their losses didn't match their earnings. They were raking in tons of dough. They just happened to be spending it too quickly.

There are very few industries where people can vote with their wallets. I live in an area with LOTS of internet options*. I can vote with my wallet between AT&T and Time Warner. Who happen to provide roughly equivalent non-service and old products. Their main competitor is Netflix, who SUPRISE, SUPRISE, they would like to run out of business by providing "tiered service". I'd say that Netflix's success shows that customers HAVE voted with their wallets FOR net neutrality.

Unfortunately, AT&T et. al have massive lobbying power and a massive anti-competitive political and legal framework on their side.

You can technically live without electricity but that doesn't mean the power company should be allowed to bill you more per kWh just because you bought a Kenmore fridge instead of a GE even if they both use the same amount of power...

We have advanced to the point where not having internet access or even not having reasonably fast internet access can place people at a significant disadvantage, especially when it comes to communication and political discourse which are both essential to the democratic process

So you believe that corporations should be allowed to use any old dirty tricks they want, and we should simply wait until enough people catch on and decide not to do business with them? That approach leads to fascism, my friend, and then you won't get to vote with your wallet, because there won't be any non-fascist options.

So you believe that corporations should be allowed to use any old dirty tricks they want, and we should simply wait until enough people catch on and decide not to do business with them? That approach leads to fascism, my friend, and then you won't get to vote with your wallet, because there won't be any non-fascist options.

Perhaps, but what is more fascist than telling a business owner that they have no power over their own property? Seriously, if CableCompany runs all that copper to those homes at their own cost, signs up customers of their own free will, provides them with the service as advertised, who is the government to intervene?

I understand the concept. And I like it. I just feel there exists no power under the United States government to apply it. Maybe, maybe on the backbone(s) where there are commons-claims to

I disagree. Your point would be better made by requiring the government purchase all the wire they wish to have powers over. Let there be no privately-owned comms and the problem goes away.

That is to say, a group of people forming a corporation get full protection, but a group of people forming a government do not appear to have any property rights at all under the actual working libertarian philosophy.

This is largely accurate. The chief reason being, you or I or anyone can trivially form a corporation. Try that with a government. These are not equitable entities. Further, when was the last time a corporation imprisoned anyone?

So while governments, corporations and chess clubs are all comprised of gathered individ

The problem is that by allowing corporations to grow into monopolies and mega-corporations who have diversified and subsumed entire markets, the only way to vote with your wallet is to move into a cave and start knocking out stone axes. Take any major industry... food for example. If you do a little research you find that it all boils down to half a dozen super corporations, that control everything from the seed that's planted to the packaging that arrives at your grocery store. What are you going to do? How are you going to vote? Do you honestly plan to stop eating at restaurants or buying the 95% percent of the food on the shelves that contains the wheat, soy, or corn products produced by those mega-corporations? You know the ones, that are receiving billions of dollars of your tax dollars in subsidies for the privilege of better controlling your life. Go a little further. Those same companies are also producing the ethanol that is mixed with the gas you drive your car with, or the soy oil that is used in everything from fried food to industrial solvents, or even the chemicals derived from wheat and corn that find their way into everything from textiles to plastic bottles to computers.

WAKE UP! If you spend a dollar anywhere, any more, you voted for them. Voting with your wallet is now a quaint and sadly naive concept. The time for sleep walking is over, if you want a vote you'd better get real clear where your votes are currently going.

I agree... I want the net to be wide open, but I'd rather have it through competition; the government needs to stick to regulations making sure that healthy competition exists (anti-monopoly and price collusion, for example).

I don't like mandates like the ones proposed.

The companies that are affected could be more vocal to their customers, for example. Netflix should rightfully be telling it's customers that recent problems may have been due to Comcast interfering with the transmission instead of paying Co

You're clearly too young to have experienced the old ATT or Standard Oil.

You got me on Standard Oil but not on AT&T. And they both eventually fell. No company can maintain control forever, even if some manage for a while.

You must be too young to remember the Roman Empire. They were not regulated away you know...

Um, yes, AT&T and Standard Oil "fell", so to speak -- but they fell precisely because *regulations* were applied to break them up: AT&T's breakup [wikipedia.org], and Standard Oil's breakup [wikipedia.org]. This history makes your Roman Empire comparison something of a non sequitur, turning the Romans into the oranges to compare with AT&T's and Standard Oil's apples. I like a good fruit salad, but this one was a bit off, I'm afraid.

I personally rather that someone be ME and the other 300 million Americans (plus or minus the 100-thousand or so who are employed by the particular affected corporations) instead of the 100 guys sitting at the top of said affected corporations.

This is the problem with the internet. People are getting confused, and it's the politicians that are milking it.

On Slashdot, Engadget, Gizmodo, and every other tech site that you can think of: Net Neutrality is about preventing companies from creating a tiered system.

To the government, Net Neutrality is an excuse to take control of a system that seems to be out of control simply based on the happenings of the worst government-granted monopoly: cable (specifically Comcast). Truth be told, it is out of contr

If you want to "prevent corporate control," there are better ways like forcefully divesting the telecoms of their ISP businesses. Make Verizon sell off FiOS as a new company that has to license Verizon's infrastructure like any other business.

How can the government prevent the corporations who own these networks from having control, other than by seizing that control for itself?

Remember, the government is not a person. It's just an instrument for controlling the use of force by the collective. Net neutrality means that the collective mob has used the force of government as an instrument to gain control over other privately owned networks.

That may be what you mean by Net Neutrality, but is that what the various government agents mean by Net Neutrality? Have you looked at some of the stuff that is coming out about what the FCC means by Net Neutrality?
Just because someone uses a term you understand for something doesn't mean that they are talking about the same thing you would be if you used that term.

Is anyone supposed to get upset because a bunch of sites selling knock off products get shut down? It's funny how slashtards constantly say the government should go after the real "pirates" and yet when they do, as in the case you quoted, you still find something to bitch and moan about.

My apologies, I assumed/.ers would be relatively familiar with this idea. Sources should have been provided and I'll also retract 'studies' for articles. Also note that knock-off is different than counterfeit; I'm not saying the latter is helpful, just the former.

I think the basic point is that people who knowingly buy knock-offs were never going to be initial purchasers of the brand name goods. But they would buy them once the price became palatable to them. No sale was 'lost' by

Yeah, what about the "we aren't pressuring you but we are" from Libermans office to Amazon over Wikileaks? Which was evil there? Or will we just pretend it doesn't exist since it doesn't help the cause.

There are people who want to censor the internet. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. There are also people who want to keep the internet free. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. Those of us who want the internet to remain a medium for free speech should oppose the actions of the first group, wherever they appear, and support the actions of the second group, wherever they appear. The choice is not "government control vs. industry control" but "censorhip vs. freedom," and net neutrality serves the "freedom" side.

If you oppose net neutrality, you are on the side of the censors. If you support net neutrality, you are on the side of freedom.

Don't be a tool. This isn't an either-or situation where we get either oppressive government control or oppressive corporate control. Ground rules simply need to be laid that the corporations can operate in which bar them from abusing consumers.

Simply declaring them Title II carriers would help, since they'd be blinded as to the content and unable to bill piecemeal or throttle abusively. As it is Verizon, AT&T et. al. will get their way and we'll be left with a broken wireless internet that serves entirely the desires of the corporations providing access and not the people who actually use it.

Excuse me, but who do you think controls government? Over the last 30 years, there has been a steady erosion of checks and balances, middle class earning power and quality of life, and civil rights and freedom. At the heart of all of this has been the wholesale purchase of our government by commercial interests. At this point in the game, big business writes law, polices itself (or doesn't as the case may be), and has the vast majority of our representatives in it's pocket (in fact, forcing the need of multi-million dollar political campaigns for offices from Dog Catcher on up, ensures that only candidates who've been vetted by the money interests even get a chance to play in the political arena.) If government sucks, its because big business bought it, and now we're being governed by self obsessed, greedy capitalists who put personal profit ahead of justice, dignity, or the future of human advance.

If you're at all interested in government that isn't a brazen travesty, let's declare business a religion, and separate it from government so that the two might function apart as designed and immeasurably improve the human condition. While we're at it, we might also consider teaching ethics and social responsibility in our business schools... just a thought.

"Allowing corporations to control the internet is simply unacceptable" - yeah, about that.... [reuters.com] the govt track record is so much better. The US Govt would love nothing more than absolute control

Yes. Network neutrality is a government take-over of the internet in the same way the first amendment is a government takeover of religion.

Perhaps you shouldn't sit idly by while corporations take over the government,

If you limit the power the government has over your life, then it doesn't matter who "controls" the government. That's why it's so foolhardy to regulate the internet - you then place the internet in control of whoever happens to wield a lot of power, just by tweaking the regulations.

If you limit the power the government has over your life, then it doesn't matter who "controls" the government.

I love the hidden assumption here: that by limiting the power of government, you increase the power of individuals.

Of course, anyone familiar with the 1800s knows full well that doesn't follow.

The reality is that, if you limit the power of government, you increase the power of corporations. And given the growth in size and scope of corporations in the last hundred years or so, that lesson is *especially* relevant today.

I don't think he's a buffoon, but, you're right, it is a shame that people tune him out. Maybe those who tune him out should take this opportunity to rethink their position on the guy. So few politicians are willing to defend net neutrality it's really nice to see someone buck that trend.

Sure, I'm a socialist. I believe that public education, health care, and infrastructure are good things to have. Capitalism is a nice theory, but taken to its extreme, you get crap like the latest wall street meltdown.

Net Neutrality isn't going to stop QoS, it is stopping the ISPs from double dipping... going to netflix and saying "hey if you don't pay us 100k a month, we are going to bandwidth limit _your service_ to all our customers tomorrow" The ISP then limits netflix traffic in their customer pool, and pushes their video on demand service....

This IS the issue at hand.

If we don't get some type of net neutrality, what happens when Joe the Plumber who runs Plumbers-For-Hire.com starts getting strong armed by their ISP? Hey Joe, we noticed that you are getting kinda big in your city... if you don't pay us an extra 1,000 bucks a month, we are going to block our customers in your city from viewing your site...

QoS on the other hand, is saying that _any_ type of VoIP packet traversing our network gets tagged priority 1, urgent and important (IE low latency and error free), and any bittorrent traffic will get tagged priority 7. This way VoIP on their network doesn't start experiencing latency if their network becomes saturated by torrent traffic.

BAD QoS is when the company says ComcastVoIPService gets priority 1 while Skype gets priority 6... now they are unfairly limiting a competitors product, of course they won't have problems giving skype a priority 1 tag for you if you want to pay an extra $5 per month... and as long as Skype is paying them handsomely for the no latency privilege.

If the legislation isn't *very* carefully worded, it will. Ironically, this is evident right in your post. You said this was okay:

QoS on the other hand, is saying that _any_ type of VoIP packet traversing our network gets tagged priority 1, urgent and important (IE low latency and error free), and any bittorrent traffic will get tagged priority 7.

But this isn't:

BAD QoS is when the company says ComcastVoIPService gets priority 1 while Skype gets priority 6

Yes, there is the possibility today for an ISP to "double dip". Except we are rapidly reaching the point where the market share building justification for low prices and acceptable losses are coming to an end. Most ISPs aren't going to be to happy about raising residential rates to match what businesses have been paying for years, except the revenue offset is going to come from somewhere.

We can stand together and say "Charge us more, but don't charge Netflix or Google - we like them". Or we can say "Keep

You can say the ISPs are getting enough and they should not be allowed any more profits. Unfortunately, that way likes the Soviet-style command economy. You aren't going to be able to tell anyone they don't deserve any more profits.

Except that in many places, the ISPs were given their monopolies through Soviet-style, oh, wait, American-style wheeling and dealing. They were subsidized by taxes, given eminent domain powers, allowed to tear up public streets to route their infrastructure, and given sweetheart

How about this, I'm trying to have a skype video call with aunt Betty, but keep getting video and audio packet loss cause people like you keep hogging up all the neighborhood bandwidth by watching your netflix, youtube, and other media streaming services when you all could just go out and get DirecTV or something. And little Johnny down the street says you're killing him in online gaming cause his ping is so high he's unable to snipe the enemy sniper in the battles on 2fort in Team Fortress 2. That's not all. Dave next door says you're causing him to get up very early in the morning, say 3 AM-ish so he can get decent VPN connection speeds to the work VPN server in order to get work files uploaded and synced on time.

It's so easy to blame everybody else for your connection issues, when in fact what you and countless others have been doing is causing grief with everybody else. And who's at fault? Not you, Betty, me, Dave, or little Johnny. The people at fault are the ones managing our connections, the ISP. They're the ones that are suppose to be managing this shit correctly by keeping their networks maintained, upgraded when necessary, using something like a round-ribbon load balancer to keep neighborhood bandwidth usage per peer fair (basically evenly distributed), and not deliberately cripple services in order to justify their yearly price increases.

And look at it this way. The ISP sold me a up to 1.5mbps / 256kps DSL connection. So, who are you to say what I can and cannot use it for, and when and when not I can use it? I paid $53/month for this connection and I'm going to use it how I please. Just as you want to use it how you please. You want to watch your netflix and I want to watch a web cam of a christmas light setup from somebody in Boulder, Colorado.

Net Neutrality is an idea to prevent ISPs from deciding that netflix and youtube traffic to their customers isn't cost effective, so they either throttle it way down, basically giving them the lowest QoS priority, unless they get paid extra by charging you additional fees to be able to use said services, and also billing netflix and youtube for the traffic going to their customers. Doesn't make sense since we the ISP customers pay the ISP already for said internet service, and netflix and youtube, etc... pay their ISPs for internet service. So, everything is already paid for. But its the greed of the ISPs that want to change the rules.

The ISP is allowed to throttle your nasty neighbor who is running BitTorrent all the time, and distribute the available service evenly.

How happy are you going to be if your neighbor watches the ISP's paid-for video service all the time and because of that you are blocked from downloading what you want since the ISP would prefer that all the bandwidth be used by the paid-for extra?

You do realize that you are asking the SAME legislative body that than passed the DMCA, and COPA to write a law regulating the internet?

How could that possibly have any unintended bad consequences?

The CORRECT answer here is for the FCC to brand the internet common carrier. They have that within their power, they have been told by the courts that that would be acceptable. They are COMPLETELY unwilling to do so. Why, because if they do that they won't have the CONTROL that they desire so much.

The CORRECT answer here is for the FCC to brand the internet common carrier.

I feel like you're falling into the propaganda. Saying "the internet" is like saying "earth" -- you're covering more than you intended. That's why AT&T is always talking about not "regulating the internet" and trying to get you to think that means them -- they're not the internet. They're the phone company. People don't want to regulate "the internet" for good reason -- you don't want content-based regulations. You don't want to regulate the endpoints. AT&T and Comcast want you to think that means y

You do realize that you are asking the SAME legislative body that than passed the DMCA, and COPA to write a law regulating the internet?

I think you're giving Congress a bit more credit than they deserve. Lobbyists write the laws, and members of Congress add riders to the laws appropriating money for some project in their district in order to get reelected by a populace that they failed to represent when they introduced the lobbyists' handiwork.

No one has yet given me a technical definition of network neutrality that allows me to block or filter spam.

Spam is already illegal. Enacting rules or legislation that explicitly allows for filtering of traffic deemed illegal based on pre-existing law would be trivial enough.

If your words do not mean EXACTLY what you want, and have all the exceptions clearly encoded, you have probably made things worse rather than better.

While I believe your example is poor, in this, you are absolutely correct.

The problem is, there really are legitimate uses of QoS, and defining regulation that enforces net neutrality while *also* allowing for legitimate use of QoS is extremely challenging. For example, a rule stating "source/destination-based QoS is illegal" is too simplistic, as it still allows protocol-level discrimination (Skype is the obvious example here). If you then say "well, then make protocol-level QoS illegal" means you've made *all* QoS illegal, and that's bad, too (deprioritizing bulk transfers behind real-time traffic is the primary need QoS fills).

Fundamentally, I'll bet net neutrality regulation would have to go the way of obscenity laws... ie, the "I know it when I see it" approach. Which, obviously, has massive problems of its own.

IPv6 provides a way for applications to request handling without delay throughout the WAN.Packets have priority levels. Applications not needing top priority, e.g. email, can voluntarily downgrade their priority.Video and audio applications could upgrade their packet priority.

The key word here is applications, not ISPs.

Both content sources and recipients are already paying ISPs differentially for bandwidth capability differences and or data transferredamounts, so why is anything other than application-volunteered packet prioritizing needed?

If various applications (e.g. someone's web server implementation) are cheating and saying all their traffic is video, there is a rather largeand sometimes effective tech community shunning mechanism in place.